Software-assisted document design is prevalent in the printing, graphics, and other industries. In response to user needs, software applications have been developed, which enable a user to design, edit, and render documents. Some software applications provide user interfaces, which enable a user to create documents by placing visual representations of objects on a page at locations that are determined by the user. These objects may include, for example, textual, graphical, and photographic objects, to name a few.
In some cases, a user may create and store multiple versions of a document before settling on a final version. For example, in designing a layout for an advertisement page, a layout designer may experiment with different placements and configurations of the page's objects. During this process, the layout designer may create multiple versions of the layout, where each version may be spawned from one or more prior versions. The designer may save some or all of the versions, so that he or she may revert back to a previous version at a later time. In addition, the designer may want to compare multiple versions on screen and/or in printed output. In both cases, multiple copies of the document need to be saved, where the copies may have the same content but different content layout. When a significant number of versions or renditions of a document are preserved, a substantial amount of data storage resources may be consumed. In addition, managing and tracking the multiple versions or renditions may be difficult and inefficient to implement.